


fever

by Anemoi



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-14 23:48:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5763610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi/pseuds/Anemoi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steven looks at him very slowly, appraising. It makes Luis uncomfortable, but he thinks that must be the point. <br/>“Do you live forever, then?” he says, coming over and sticking out his hand. Luis shakes it, fumbling for the right words. That wasn't something most people asked at first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fever

**Author's Note:**

> i started this last september when we lost to united, ran out of steam after a week when i got over losing, and decided to finish it after we lost to united, again. A byproduct of bitterness induced insomnia.

 

 

 

Steven looks at him very slowly, appraising. It makes Luis uncomfortable, but he thinks that must be the point.

“Do you live forever, then?” he says, coming over and sticking out his hand. Luis shakes it, fumbling for the right words. That wasn't something most people asked at first.

He settles for, “No.” Steven raises his eyebrows, but Luis doesn't elaborate.

“Welcome to the team,” Steven smiles. It made the wrinkles around his eyes deepen, and Luis feels the whisper of his pulse, brushing the tips of his fingers against Steven's wrist.

  
  


-

  
  


Liverpool's so cold in January the air feels like bites against any exposed skin. Luis lies awake during the nights, the air suffocatingly warm with the heater on, Sofia curled away with her back to him. He runs a hand down her spine, waiting for her to shift around, sleepy.

“Trouble sleeping?” she mumbles.  
“Every night,” Luis jokes, and she smiles at it, like she always did, and drops her head on his chest. He counts her even breathes, the slow expand of her lungs, the blood making the rounds through her body. The windows are fogged up from the warmth inside and the cold out. It feels like rest.

  
  


Steven's blowing on his hands during training, the tips of his ears frozen red. “Not cold?”

Luis shrugs. “I can't feel the cold.”

“Oh,” Steven says, puzzled. He passes the ball to Luis, and this Luis knows. He traps it, passes it back, and Steven smiles again, not out of politeness but something more genuine. Luis knows also, Liverpool is twelfth in the table.

He scores on his debut, no warmth in the frozen air in front of his face until the rest of his teammates pile on, until they're sound (the sound a storm) and color (the color a warm, warm red), and it feels like living.

  
  


-

  
  


The blood comes in carefully labelled packets. Luis can tell it wasn't human blood, but when he brings it up to Brendan, Brendan's face goes a little pale.   
“You know we have tried to make certain accommodations,” he says quietly, head down and not meeting Luis' eyes. “But this is the best we can do.”

Luis gives up. When he was younger there were things to be done, careless people to pick off and feed from, but Liverpool is precarious. Liverpool is a crucial step towards a different life, and he knows beyond doubt that he has to pick his battles with care.

It doesn't affect his football, or at least he thinks it doesn't. Sofia offers, frowning worriedly, but he would sooner starve to death. It wasn't that dire anyway, though drinking pig's blood was like swilling muddy silt around his mouth, a gritty taste lingering when he licked his teeth afterwards. It makes his thoughts unclear and fractured, shortens his temper. He shoves more people on the pitch, fingers digging in a bit too deep on their arms, swallowing back thoughts on sinews, tendons, _blood_.

He doesn't know how Steven found out, but one day after a match, he shuffles over to stand in front of Luis. They'd lost. Luis doesn't look up from the floor.

“Look. You can-” Steven stops. Luis chances a glance up. Steven’s holding out his arm stiffly, wrist limp, forearm slightly turned. Luis looks at the light picking out the golden hairs on his arm, the faint blue trace of veins under his untanned skin. A pause as Luis starts to understand.

 

“It works better if.” Luis starts, stops. The words feel jarring in his mouth, his tongue tripping over the consonants. “Here.” He gestures upwards, at Steven’s neck.

 Steven frowns. “Will it show?”

 “No.”

 Another pause while Steven considers. “Alright.” He says, slowly, moving closer. Luis shuffles over a little so Steven can sit down.

  The bench feels too hard. The lights on the locker room ceiling too bright. The white walls, the benches against them, the rigid uncompromising straight lines of what constituted their world. This was sacred. Luis swallows back against sudden nausea. Steven tugs off his shirt, expectant.

  “You don’t have to.” Luis starts, then gives up because he didn’t know how to say it. Instead Steven looks at him, as though awaiting further instruction.

  Luis reaches out a hand, heart beating in double time. If he ruins this there is no return. Steven’s hands are in a tangle in his lap. Luis reaches out, deliberate, keeping his hands where Steven can see them.

  He turns Steven’s head a little. Steven closes his eyes as Luis leans in, barest rise and fall of his chest. White walls. Grey floor. Straight lines. Luis lets his hand fall on Steven’s, in reassurance or for that, he doesn’t know.

  
-

  
  


Steven wasn't a blood supply by any means. Luis drinks a couple mouthfuls when he really needed to, mostly before matches, Steven always showing up and shuffling anxiously before him. Luis wondered at that, their two man unspoken ritual that appeared to matter to Steven as much as it mattered to Luis. On the pitch the goals come easier and easier, though the matches fall one way or another like a teetering seesaw. Steven looks at him like a talisman. Luis knows this, Liverpool is sixth in the table at the end of the season.

  
  


Steven comes up when Luis has his arms up to the elbows in the ice bath. Luis sees him and pulls his arms out, offering a fist. Steven comes closer, wordless, to uncurl his fingers. The ice cubes aren't melting on Luis' palms.

“We’ll do better,” Steven says. Liverpool in May is milder, Steven's training shirt sticking to his sides.

Luis looks at the ice cubes melting into puddles in Steven’s hand. Skin, bone, blood running through his tissues. When he looks up Steven’s looking at him strangely. Luis reaches out to touch him, and Steven doesn’t flinch away.

Luis smiles.

“Next season,” he says.

 

-

  
  


They don't, in actual fact. It takes a year for anything to happen, a whisper of glory on the wind that remained, always, a whisper. A mystery waiting to unfold. Still Luis wonders, settling into life on Merseyside as easily as a stone sinking in water, if Steven's blood helped more than either of them expected.

“Next season,” Steven says. Luis knows this, Liverpool is seventh in the table. Luis looks at the man in front of him, looks at his set jaw and determined eyes, thinks of how Steven will spend his entire life building sandcastles by the shore. Thinks of Sofia shivering against the cold, hugging their daughter closer. Thinks of Spain, haphazardly, like an old dream from a past life.

 

“Next season,” Luis agrees. The blood in his mouth burned, but he swallows it anyway.

  
  


 

-

 

 

Luis knows one thing. You cannot be redeemed by the grace of your football. If there was any grace in a game like this at all, no matter how close Liverpool comes to a religion, Anfield to a church, the familiar songs hymns. And yet here is holiness he could touch, running onto the pitch, bending down to drag a hand through the freshly cut grass.

What _will_ we do? That was the question, at long, long last. Not this- the sanctuary of five European cups, the history heavy as an anvil the Kop keeps permanent on their shoulders. Steven looking at him amidst a thicket of players during a free kick, his eyes saying, _make them forget history._

 

Here is holiness Luis understood. Steven’s hard tackle, the opposition player's frozen grimace, eyes screwed shut as he hits the floor, the grind of bone against bone. Grass burn against his knees as he slides across to the corner. He screams at the crowd and Steven’s there, laughing, pulling Luis' head into the crook of his neck.

 

The Kop roaring. Red as arterial blood. He turns his face away from Steven’s shoulder to look at the other team's dejected players. You cannot be redeemed by the quality of your football, but did it matter?

He crushes Steven to him, Steven, who’s still yelling, shaking his fist at the stands. His heart hammering against their chests. Luis shuts his eyes, grinning.

One heart enough for the both of them.

  
  


-

  
  


  
Before the match against Manchester United, Steven puts a hand against Luis' chest, hesitant. Luis waits. There is after all, only one heartbeat in the room. Steven withdraws his hand, frowning.

“So do you live forever, then?” Steven asks.

“Yes. But I won’t,” Luis says, “because Sofia.”

Steven looks confused, eyebrows drawing down. Luis waits patiently for him to make the connection. Her death, and then his own.

“I understand,” Steven says finally. Luis wants to explain, but it was difficult to when he didn't even know exactly what he wanted to say. Did Steven really understand? About finding redemption in what you loved?

 

 

Steven scores twice. He says, _We can win the league this season,_ afterwards.Like it's finally a possibility, like he's naming his wounds. Luis looks at him, wants to ask Steven the same question Steven asked him when they first met, except he already knew the answer.

 

There's only one man who'll live forever between the two of them. The man bleeding, the man with an eight on his back, the man shaking his fist at the crowd in triumph. Love like nails in the palms of your hands. Love like nails through the soles of your feet. Of course Steven understood.

 

 

 

-

 

 

When they draw against Crystal Palace, Luis cries. He's surprised by it, and so caught unawares. The scoreboard remained impassive in front of his tears.

It feels vacuous. He cries, thinking, _enough,_ and immediately, _it's over._ It feels like an ice cube, boxed in his chest, refusing to melt, no fire left in this world to melt it. It may, to others-those who still have beating hearts- feel like death, but to Luis it feels like living forever. It feels like living forever alone, bereft of everyone he's ever loved, living alone with one inescapable fact, blunt and bloody: you have tried your best, and it was not enough.

 

 

-

 

 

 

Steven opens the door after two rings.

“Come in,” he says, not looking at Luis. There are two suitcases in the hallway, a wide brimmed hat that probably belonged to Alex flopped over one of them. Steven sees him looking and says, “Going away for a bit.”

“When?” Luis asks, voice scratchy. He clears his throat. They're in the kitchen, and Steven's rolling up his sleeves, expectant. There's a needle on the table, a plastic packet attached to it.

“I don't need- it's too much,” Luis says.

“Don’t be stupid,” Steven says, and sits down at the table. Luis looks at him for a moment longer.

“Okay.” he gestures. “Fold your sleeves.”

Luis inserts the needle carefully. The light was too fluorescent, highlighting the shadows under Steven's eyes. His blood flows thickly into the plastic pack.

“Enough?” Steven frowns. Luis shrugs, dumps a third of it into a mug.

“Yes.” He takes a sip. It was very warm. Steven laughs, half shakily, sleeves still rolled to his elbows. Luis puts the cup down and goes over, kneeling down on the kitchen tiles. He wraps a bandage around it carefully. Probably needlessly, but it was the ritual of it. The chances of infection are next to none. He tapes it up, fingers gentle.

“I think I’m going crazy, mate.” Steven says. Luis looks up. Steven’s tapping his temple gently with two fingers, smiles. His eyes looked very sane.

“It’s only a game.” Luis says instead.

“You don’t mean that.” Steven says, shaking his head. His hand’s curled loose on his lap.

Luis doesn’t say anything.

  
  


_-_

  
  


_Cut my veins open and I bleed Liverpool red_. Steven's blood was four shades darker, but Luis thinks of what he said anyway, in the most literal sense. He meets Steven's eyes and Steven doesn't flinch away.

So it was safe to leave, Luis thinks. They were not redeemed. The question remained unanswered, the designated place empty, the word half spoken. Yet it was safe to leave, the iron rust taste of blood still in his mouth. _Liverpool red._

_Why?_ he'd asked, when Steven got up from the kitchen table. Steven turned to him and cupped his face seriously, looked at Luis like he was telling him a secret.

_So you will remember,_ he'd said.

  
  


-

 

Barcelona is warm in September, and Sofia's parents comes to get them at the airport.

“How was England, Luis?” Sofia's father says.

Luis considers. “Cold,” he says, then smiles to indicate it was a joke. To his credit, the man doesn't cringe away at his smile.

“Good,” he says, “I'm glad you decided to come to Spain.”

“Me too,” Luis says easily, Liverpool melting like a faded photograph in the back of his mind.

 

 

-

 

It's in America when he sees Steven again.

“You alright?” Steven asks, eyes soft. Luis looks at the familiar curve of his neck, and the unfamiliar white jersey below it.

“Yes,” Luis says. “Winning. Scoring goals.” He smiles. The treble in his first season is not so bad.

“That’s good,” Steven says. “Good.”

“And you?” Luis asks, meaning it more than the perfunctory exchange.

Steven doesn’t say anything, head lowered. Luis gets close, hesitant, presses a palm against Steven’s chest. Through the thin layer of his shirt Luis feels it, a heart he had borrowed. It beats steady. What did he use to think, about love, or redemption? _If you loved something enough-_

“You’re happy,” Luis says, satisfaction running through him like cold rain.

Steven looks up at him. Fireless, now. But not ashes.

 “Yes,” he says simply, and his smile makes something flicker in Luis’ chest, a memory of a heartbeat.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading <3


End file.
